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HAND MADE CHOCOLATES
ONLY THE BEST IMPORTED BELGIAN CHOCOLATE IS USED
A Brief Biography of the four leading ladies
Helen Joseph
Helen Beatrice May Fennell was born in Sussex, England, in 1905. She graduated from King's College, University of London, in 1927, taught for three years in India, then came to South Africa in 1931, where she met and married Billie Joseph.
In 1951 Helen took a job with the militant Garment Workers Union, led by Solly Sachs. Sachs had a profound influence on Helen - from him she learnt her politics. Through him she came to see the true face of apartheid - the oppression of people not classified white. Helen was appalled by the double oppression of black women, and was a pivotal figure in the formation of the Federation of South African Women. The 8th August 1956 was one of the most important moments of her illustrious political career, when, with the FEDSAW leaders, she spear-headed a march of 20,000 women to Pretoria's Union Buildings to protest against the pass laws. August 8 has, since then, been commemorated as South African Women's Day. Arrested on a charge of high treason in December 1956, banned in 1957, Helen's life became a long saga of police persecution. She was the first person to be placed under house arrest. She endured, and survived threats, bullets shot through her bedroom window late at night, even a bomb wired to her front gate. Her last banning order was lifted when she was in her 80th year
Rahima Moosa
Rahima Moosa was born in the Strand, Cape Town on 14 October 1922. As a teenager, Rahima and her identical twin sister, Fatima, became politically active after they became aware of the unjust segregationist laws that ruled South Africa. In 1943 Rahima became the shop steward for the Cape Town Food and Canning Workers’ Union.
In 1951 she married Dr. Hassen “Ike” Mohamed Moosa, a fellow comrade and treason trialist. She moved to Johannesburg and while there Rahima became involved with the Transvaal Indian Congress and thereafter the African National Congress. In 1955 she played a significant role in the organisation of the Congress of the People.
While pregnant with her daughter, Natasha, she helped organise the Women’s March. Together with Helen Joseph, Lilian Ngoyi and Sophia Williams, Rahima spearheaded the historic march to the Union Buildings where women handed over petitions against pass laws. Rahima and her twin sister Fatima always managed to confuse the security branch officer as they could easily switch identities, in times of harassment.
In the early 1960s, Rahima became listed, a status that she remained in until 1990 with the unbanning of the African National Congress. In 1970 she suffered a heart attack, as a result of diabetes and after this her health deteriorated drastically until her death in 1993, a year before independence.
Sophy Williams
Sophia Theresa Williams-de Bruyn was born in 1938, in Villageboard, a mixed area that had different nationalities living side by side. She attended various schools and was employed at Van Lan Textile Factory during the school holidays. She later became Shop steward, and increased her involvement in representing and articulating the grievances of the workers. She continued working in the factory and never returned to school. At the Textile factory she rose to become an executive member of the Textile Workers Union in Port Elizabeth.
She became the founder member of the South African Congress of Trade Unions – SACTU (now COSATU)), which is the predecessor of the Congress of South African Trade Union (COSATU). In 1955 the ‘Coloured People Congress’ was formed and she was appointed as a full-time organiser of the ‘Coloured People’s Congress’ in Johannesburg.
Sophia and a lawyer Shulamuth Muller helped to organize the women around pass issues with women such as Helen Joseph, Lilian Ngoyi and Rahima Moosa. She led the march to the Union Buildings in 1956 and is the only surviving leader of the historical event. She currently serves as a human resources manager and a commissioner at the Commission for Gender Equality. She is a member of the National Executive Committee of the ANC Womens League and is a member of the Saartjie Baartman Reference Group.
Lilian Ngoyi
Lilian's life was a long battle with hardship and poverty. She was one of six children, and we used to eat mealie meal porridge every day except one Sunday in a month when we got a piece of meat.' She was sent to a primary school as a boarder, but the fees were a heavy burden, and after one year in high school she had to go to work to help support her parents and her brother.
Lilian married, but her husband died when her small daughter was three years old, and after the death of her father, she went on working to keep her family that now consisted of her own child, an adopted child, and her mother.
In 1952 she was an active member of the Garment Workers Union (later elected to the Executive). A year after of joining the ANC Lilian was elected to the National Executive, and also to the position of President of the Women's League.
Together with the Secretary of the Women's Federation, Helen Joseph, Lilian Ngoyi led the 20,000 women who went to Pretoria to protest-against the pass laws in August, 1956. Holding thousands of petitions in one arm, she was the one who knocked on the Prime Minister's door (it remained closed.) At the end of 1956, she was one of the 156 leading people arrested on a charge of treason, and endured the four-year-long trial. While the trial was still on (at that time, the accused were out on bail) she was arrested again in the emergency of 1960, and spent some time in solitary confinement, which she found very hard, particularly as the conditions in which she was held were harsh.
For 18 years this brilliant and beautiful woman spent most of her time in a tiny house, suffering banning one banning order after another.
She suffered heart trouble, and died at the age of 68.